Laurence Van Der Post:
The extraordinary life of Laurens van der Post is not easily capsulized. Author of of many books, farmer, soldier, prisoner of war, political adviser to British heads of state, educator, humanitarian, philosopher, explorer, and conservationist are titles that barely indicate the depth and breadth of this rare individual. Born in 1906 in the interior of southern Africa, he lived among the people who created the first blueprint for life on earth, becoming the principal chronicler of the Stone Age Kalahari Bushmen. He was also one of C.G. Jung's closest friends for sixteen years. Van der Post dedicated his life to teaching the meaning and value of indigenous cultures in the modern world, a world he felt is in danger of losing its spiritual identity to technology, prejudice, empty values, and a lack of understanding of the interconnectedness of all life on earth. Awarded a knighthood (the C.B.E.) in 1981, Sir Laurens died after his 90th birthday, in December, 1996.
QUOTE FROM one of HIS BOOKs:
"What had happened to that great dreaming process I discovered then in me and others? What of the ladder, phosphorescent between a star-packed heaven and stony waste-land earth, charged with angelic messengers ascending and descending it? When I looked around me it was not only as if the dream had vanished in the debris of war and disaster behind me, and the ladder between men and their greatest value removed, but that they had lost their capacity to dream. ... I knew that somehow the world had to be set dreaming again...."
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